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Comment: Allan Brown: I won't dance to your MTV tune, Jack

From far and wide they came: titans, nay behemoths of their chosen fields. On Thursday evening, in a usually sedate sector of the central belt, they gathered like conquering heroes beneath the sizzling lights and serried ranks of the television cameras and did what they do best. The audience could only gape in amazement as, one after another, the participants preened and strutted their way to glory. The sights and sounds were . . . well, awe inspiring.

But that’s enough about Question Time’s live broadcast from Glasgow featuring John Swinney, Rosie Kane and Edwina Currie. Fifty miles away in Edinburgh, the cameras were trained on citizens altogether less preoccupied by the intricacies of the Boundary Commission.

There were 6,000 of us, apparently, in a tent on the Leith docks, all for one of those curious celebrity-related tsunamis that sweep through Scotland now and again, like Madonna’s wedding, the Mike Tyson fight or